The available land for building the new Office and Laboratory has an area of about 2750 m2, confronting the West withthe small site of Apimadeira, the North and East with one of the E101 highway exit, and at South by the access road.
The area in question has a very rugged topography, stratified on various platforms contained by walls made with stones from the region.
These platforms, present altimetric gap between themselves and with the road that faces the ground. This expressive topography shows up in the landscape design with the high retaining walls, in connection with the land, with Apimadeira and with the municipal road.
The surrounding areas, present a construction based on scattered low density single-family types of occupation.
As previously indicated, the specific features of the land available for building the RLVFS necessarily involves the relationship of the building with a semi-rural surrounding context, something hybrid and degraded, saving memories quite visible off the old properties countryside structure.
Thus in a context of "Isolated Building," seeks to take that reality and somehow transform it by introducing new links to the former context, characterized by some vague reference to the level of overall plan for the area.
This project, led to a process of choices and options based on optimizing the following factors:
- In respect of the building with the topography of the land, maintaining and preserving the whole system of views surrounding;
- In minimizing the impacts of construction (buildings, surrounding road network, car parks etc.). Over the territory in question, seeking to integrate a particular set between those elements and built new landscape proposal for all exterior spaces;
- In option typological of the building itself strongly influenced by the performance or functional use in which the laboratory component prevail, with all the complexity-flexibility needed to optimize the various networks and systems installations;
- In a constructive economic and environmental control, reflected in a certain compactness of the building, rationality of the structural knitwear and the building options of systems and used materials. However the search of view from the surrounding bays and outside landscape was never forgotten.